"There will be no need for him to call after to-morrow," remarked Miss Letitia, still thinking of the expense. "Indeed, I am far from sure that there was any occasion for him to call at all. Poor people always doctor themselves for colds, and why should not I do the same?" To this Miss Pengarvon made no reply. There was something in her sister's looks that made her more uneasy than she cared to admit, even to herself. She took her work into the sick woman's room, and sat with her all through the dull October day, and till far into the night. Miss Letitia was strangely drowsy, and could scarcely keep her eyes open for longer than a few minutes at a time. "It must be something in this nasty medicine that makes me sleep so," she said once or twice with a touch of irritation. "I am sorry to be such poor company, Barbara." Miss Barbara smiled a little grimly at this. At the best of times poor Letitia's company was never anything more than mildly depressing. The following morning Dr. Bland found his patient no better. The feverish symptoms were more pronounced than before. He changed the medicine at once, and promised to call again next day. "If he were of opinion that there were the slightest danger, he would call again before to-morrow," argued Miss Pengarvon with herself. The bedrooms of the sisters adjoined each other, with a door of communication between. This door was always left open at night, so that there was a sense of companionship through the dark hours which was not unpleasant to either sister, although they never admitted it in so many words. Miss Pengarvon was always a light sleeper, and to-night she got up several times and stalked into her sister's room--a tall, gaunt figure in a long white night-dress and a ruffled nightcap. Miss Letitia was talking a great deal in her sleep, and it was her half-sister Isabel's name which she mentioned oftener than that of anyone else. Isabel seemed to be nearly always in some great peril, from which Letitia seemed to be vainly trying to rescue her. Once or twice when she opened her eyes she did not seem to recognize Barbara; and later on, when she woke up and asked for a drink, she fancied that it was her mother she was speaking to, and that she and her sister were on the point of setting out to gather blackberries in the wood. A great dread began to take possession of Miss Pengarvon's heart. Dr. Bland came as usual in the course of the forenoon. Miss Pengarvon followed him out of the sick woman's room. "My sister is much worse this morning," she said. There was a sort of menace in her voice, and a fierce, angry light in her eyes as she spoke, that half frightened the little Doctor. It was as though she implied that it was his fault her sister was no better. "Scarcely worse, I think," responded the Doctor in his most soothing tones, "although, perhaps, there is hardly that improvement in her I had hoped to find. But these things take time, my dear madam, time."